Grilled Butterflied Chicken with Dry Brine

First, a butterflied chicken is a quick(er) chicken. A four pound chicken grills in about 45 minutes; left whole, they take an hour or longer.

Second, a butterflied chicken is simple to carve. Seven slices and you’re ready for the dinner table.Nine if you cut the breast pieces in half like I do.

This is my favorite seasoning for chicken – an overnight dry brine with salt and pepper, then some smoking wood in the grill. Simple and delicious. Good chicken will shine with this recipe; cheap chicken will be bland. In other words, don’t use the $0.69/lb store chicken with this recipe. Make the effort to get a good bird, and you will be rewarded.If you have a good local chicken store, like my local Brunty Farms or Difeo’s Poultry, great! If not, check the grocery store for a Bell and Evans bird. Or, get a Kosher bird, and skip the dry brine; kosher birds are pre-brined.

Directions:For more butterflying details, see my How to Butterfly A Chicken Video1. Butterfly and Dry brine the chickens: Butterfly the chickens: cut out the backbone, then flatten the breastbone by pressing down hard with the back of your hand. Fold the wing tips back under the wing. Sprinkle each chicken evenly with 4 teaspoons kosher salt and 1 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper, concentrating a little extra on the breasts and thighs. Refrigerate for 4 to 24 hours.

2. Prepare the grill: Prepare your grill for cooking on indirect high heat, and add the wood chunk to the coals. For my Weber kettle, I light a chimney starter full of charcoal, wait for it to be covered with ash, then pour it in two equal piles on the sides of the grill, and put the drip pan in the middle, between the piles. Finally, I put the wood chunk on one of the piles.I highly recommend the Weber Chimney Starter, because it is larger than most chimney starters. It holds 5 quarts of charcoal, which exactly the right size for cooking this recipe.

3. Grill the chicken: Put the chicken on the grill over the drip pan, skin side down. Cook, covered, for 30 minutes. Flip the chicken skin side up and cook, covered, until the chicken is done, about another 15 minutes. The chicken should be 160 to 170*F in the thickest part of the breast, and 170*F to 180*F in the deepest part of the thigh.*At this point, you should have nice, crispy skin. If you don’t, put the chicken skin side down over the coals and sear for 1-3 minutes, or until the skin is crisped to your liking. Watch out – dripping chicken fat causes flare-ups. You don’t want to burn the chicken at the last minute.

4. Serve: Let the chicken rest for 15 minutes, then carve into serving pieces. Cut the legs from the body, then cut the drumsticks from the thighs. Cut the wings from the breasts, then split the breast right down the middle.

Variations: *Herbs: I like to keep this recipe simple. But… I will occasionally stuff a couple sprigs of thyme under the skin of the chicken breast as part of the dry brining step.

Notes: *I cooked two chickens. One four pounder, that took about 50 minutes. The other one was a monster, that I’ve been saving in the freezer. I’m guessing it was about 5.5 pounds, but I’m not sure. That one took 1 hour and 10 minutes to cook. Based on those numbers, I would say it’s about 12.5 minutes a pound for butterflied chicken.

*My kids demolished this chicken. No picky eating this time around – everyone came back for seconds and thirds. “Dad! This smells like bacon!” It’s amazing what a little wood smoke does for flavor.

What do you think? Questions? Other ideas? Leave them in the comments section below.

the only thing i can add is that i recommend to take out the breast bone. Once the chicken is spread open you can literally take is out with your fingers and it makes carving and eating much easier later on.Great post as always.

I cooked this tonight on my Webber 6-burner grill. With the 2 outside burners to high, and 2 more on low, this took almost an hour and a half to cook to 160. Maybe for gas grills it needs to be 4 burners to high to get this right?

Otherwise — tastes fantastic. My wife is extremely surprised to find that I can butterfly a chicken!

Wow – four burners on high seems like a lot of firepower. I would have guessed two on high would be enough to duplicate my charcoal grill results, and that two on high plus two on low would have been plenty.

My charcoal grill starts at about 500*F on high, and cools down from there. I am pretty sure that two burners on high keep my gas grill at 450*F to 500*F.

I’ll try this myself on my 6 burner Weber, but out of curiosity:1. How big were the chickens?2. What temp was your lid thermometer reporting?3. Did you pre-heat the grill before adding the chicken?

I would have thought two on high would have been fine as well — That is generally how I do the rotisserie and it keeps good and hot. Answers:

1) About 4 lbs. Not huge. I just made one.2) It was dark but in the 375 range I think.3) Preheated with all burners for about 15 mins. The chicken was out of the refrigerator for about the same amount of time before I plopped it on.

Thank you for following up. Yes, you did everything the same way I would have. I’m guessing 375*F is not hot enough. If you try the recipe again, add in an extra burner or two set to high (instead of low) to see if that helps.

I’m going to try this again myself, to see how it turns out, but I haven’t had a chance to do it yet. Thanks again for letting me know what you were seeing!